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In everyday life, there seem to be two antecedents of empathic concern: (a) perceiving the other as in need and (b) valuing the other’s welfare. This chapter considers each of these antecedents, as well as other possible ones—perceived innocence, similarity, and perspective taking. Cognitive abilities required to perceive need are specified, raising the possibility that only humans have the capacity to experience empathic concern. It is suggested that valuing another’s welfare naturally leads to perspective taking, allowing the latter to serve as a proxy for the former in laboratory research. Valuing of the other’s welfare is linked to human parental nurturance, which is emotion-based and goal-directed. Neurochemistry and neurophysiology of parental care and empathic concern are considered. Individual differences, including gender differences, are viewed as moderators rather than antecedents of empathic concern.

This chapter addresses two challenges to the empathy-altruism hypothesis that have attracted attention in recent years—physical versus psychological escape and self-other merging. The physical-versus-psychological-escape challenge is based on the assumption that when one feels empathic concern, out of sight is not out of mind, and so easy physical escape does not provide easy psychological escape. Both indirect and direct experimental evidence on the effects of physical and psychological escape is reviewed. The evidence fails to support this first challenge. The self-other merging challenge is that empathic concern reflects a merging of self and other, and so in helping the target of empathy one is actually helping oneself. Various versions of an empathy-merging hypothesis are distinguished, and the relevant experimental evidence is reviewed. Once again, the evidence fails to support this challenge. It is concluded that the empathy-altruism hypothesis should be tentatively accepted as true.

The empathy-altruism hypothesis states that empathic concern produces altruistic motivation. To unpack this deceptively simply hypothesis, it is necessary to know what is meant by “empathic concern,” by “altruistic motivation,” and even by “produces.” Empathic concern—other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need—is distinguished from seven other uses of the term empathy. Altruistic motivation—a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare—is distinguished from four other uses of the term altruism. Altruism is contrasted with egoism—a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing one’s own welfare. The question of why empathic concern might produce altruistic motivation is addressed by considering the information and amplification functions of emotions in general, as well as the relationship of emotion to motivation.

This essay focuses on a particular kind of caregiving--parents caring for children who have pediatric cancer. Pediatric cancer requires extensive and costly involvement from the parents of the children, especially during the invasive and highly stressful treatments that are required to treat the disease. We view this caregiving as an example of a costly long-term investment and examine the causes and the consequences of differences in parents’ motives to engage in such actions. We have found that positively- valenced empathic responses ( i.e.,” empathic concern”) among parents immediately before treatments were associated with children experiencing less pain and distress during treatments, possibly because of how high empathic concern parents communicate with their children. Drawing on Selective Investment Theory we posit that empathic concern is an emotion regulating state that is coordinated by the social bonds proposed in the theory. That is, when parents are faced with a costly long-term investment, the emotions associated with empathic concern may serve to resolve the caregiving conflict between selfish and altruistic motives in favor of the latter. We also have found that children who are resilient and cope well with stressors elicit the highest levels empathic concern from their parents. Drawing on the concept of inclusive fitness, we suggest because parents who experience high levels of empathic concern are more effective helpers; this confers additional benefits on already resilient and adaptive children. This, in turn, increases the likelihood that the genetic characteristics associated with such altruistic behaviors will be present among the descendants of these caregivers. We present some preliminary data to support this argument.

In this chapter, we discuss the role of empathy as the main precursor for prosocial behavior, taking perspectives that span from social and developmental psychology to social neuroscience. We begin by introducing compassion fatigue in caregivers as a form of pathological altruism. We move on to introduce such relevant concepts as empathy, compassion, empathic concern, and distress; we then review relevant empirical findings from social and developmental psychology and social neuroscience. Finally, we propose a new integrative model that suggests that the term compassion fatigue should be replaced by the term empathic distress fatigue to more accurately account for symptoms of withdrawal and burnout. We conclude by outlining potential ways to circumvent the downside of too much empathy.

When we help someone in need, we also benefit. If benefiting the person in need is an instrumental goal on the way to the ultimate goal of getting some self-benefit, our motivation is egoistic. If benefiting the person in need is the ultimate goal and the resultant self-benefits are unintended consequences, our motivation is altruistic. To search for such altruism, a four-step research strategy is proposed: The first step is to identify a possible source of altruistic motivation. The most likely source is empathic concern. The second, to identify the plausible egoistic ultimate goal or goals from this source. The prime egoistic suspect is removing our empathic concern. The third is to vary the situation so that either the altruistic goal or the egoistic goal, but not both, can be better reached without having to help. Experiments make this possible. The fourth, to see whether this variation reduces helping.

This chapter focuses on the empathy–altruism hypothesis, a study which claims that altruistic motivation is the result of empathic concern. It presents the egoism–altruism debate, which led to the revelation that empathy is the most likely altruistic motivation source, as well as four principles which help in testing the hypothesis. Experiments conducted to figure out the variables that differentiate altruistic and egoistic motives for helping are presented. The empathic concern of human beings is not restricted to their children, and it can also include nonhumans. The factors responsible for this capacity of empathic concern in human beings include human cognitive capacity and parental nurturance. The implications of the hypothesis are presented, including long-term welfare and improvement in racial attitudes.

This chapter discusses the components of empathy, including affective arousal and empathic concern, in relation to clinical practice, as well as the negative effects of excessive empathic arousal, including a lack of prosocial behavior and an increase of personal distress in physicians. It explores professional distress, burnout, and compassion fatigue resulting from poor emotion regulation, along with the methods to regulate empathy, including emotion suppression, framing, and exposure control. The chapter discusses the importance of developing empathy-training programs for physicians while keeping in mind the features of the empathic process, and concludes with the importance of physicians maintaining a balance regarding their empathic responses for successful patient interactions.

In Chapter 3, we found that the empathy–altruism hypothesis and the remove-empathy hypothesis (the prime egoistic suspect) make distinct predictions in an Ease-of-Escape (easy, difficult) × Empathic-Concern (low, high) 2 × 2 experimental design. This chapter describes four different experiments that employed this design. Results of none patterned as predicted by the remove-empathy hypothesis. Instead, the results consistently patterned as predicted by the empathy–altruism hypothesis. Apparently, the motivation produced by empathic concern is not directed toward the ultimate goal of removing the empathic concern itself. Some other self-benefit must be the ultimate goal of the increased helping produced by feeling empathy for a person in need.

The empathy-altruism hypothesis states that empathic concern produces altruistic motivation. In this hypothesis, empathic concernrefers to other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of a person in need; it includes feelings of sympathy, compassion, tenderness, and the like. Altruistic motivationrefers to a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing the welfare of the person with the empathy-inducing need. Over 35 experiments designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis provide remarkably consistent support. One—possibly surprising—corollary of this hypothesis is that empathy-induced altruism is not necessarily a source of moral behavior. Like egoism, it can promote violation of one’s moral standards. Experimental evidence supports this corollary. The evidence suggests that altruism and moral motivation are distinct goal-directed motives, each with strengths and weaknesses as a source of moral behavior. Wise orchestration is needed to harmonize their strengths.

Chapter 6 turns to moral emotion. From the perspective of the value→emotion→ motivation→behavior framework introduced in Chapter 1, many of what are commonly called moral emotions have been mislabeled. Rather than being evoked by threat to some moral principle or ideal, these emotions are evoked by the threat a moral violation poses to our own welfare, the welfare of a cared-for other, or the welfare of a cared-for group. As a result, these emotions are related to and promote egoistic, altruistic, or collectivistic goals. They promote moral goals only indirectly as instrumental means or unintended consequences, which makes their link to moral behavior unreliable. A distinction between interpersonal and propriety morality is as important for emotions as for motives. In contrast to our emotional response to interpersonal violations, research indicates that propriety violations may evoke truly moral emotion, especially feelings of disgust.

This chapter reviews theory and research supporting the contention that mental mechanisms that induce individuals to empathize with others have evolved in several species, and advanced levels of empathy motivate us to help others as an end in itself. It offers evidence that there is a close parallel between the evolution of mental mechanisms that mediate empathy and the development of these mechanisms through the life span. It reviews research indicating that advanced perspective-taking abilities enable us to experience empathic concern for the plight of others that motivates us to help them in order to improve their lot, as opposed to helping them in order to relieve our own distress or to achieve other selfish goals, such as making a good impression, allaying our guilt, and improving our mood.